here's what you need to have and do to transfer a cassette to digital..
if you if you have a cassette deck, an rca to 3.5mm stereo cable and a "line In" jack on your sound card you're gold.
first connect the rca part of the stereo cable into you cassette deck then the 3.5mm end into your computer and as far as hardware goes you're finished.
now for record settings.. open your control panel for the volume/record options, put your main volume to 100%, listen to it though just so it doesn't sound to distorted but remember it may sound distorted but after encoding it will sound normal so do a few tests 'till you find just the right spot, ok, now, look at the record settings and find the option for "line in" and turn that upto 100% as well so now while you're playing/recording your volume will be very loud but you need those settings loud because raw audio or wav will be different from your encoded mp3 so if you have a volume knob on your speakers just turn the volume down that way.
now for software.. there's a few options for this.. basically all you need is
audacity, it does everything you need to do and it has a few filters and effects that you may or may not need depending on the quality of your cassette, i won't get into it because anything you need to know you can just read on their website, also.. it's completely free so don't worry about trying to find some over bloated, thousand dollar commercial, hollywood engineering super fantastic miracle of sound program because you're limited to what you can do with your newly recorded soundclip.. there's really not very much you can do other than maybe remove "hum" or "hiss" usually on cassettes or "cracks" and "pops" usually on records, anything else you're going to destroy your file and make it unlistenable but i know you and you're thinking you can download anything and make your newly recorded version of the song you just transferred into a miracle of sound restoration that no one ever has been able to reproduce except for you. so after you try all the super amazing high end applications you've downloaded and found that none do what you're hearing in your mind so just install
audacity and use it.
oh and just a tip i've found early on that makes things a little bit earlier.. record the entire side of your tape or record then after both sides are complete then open each side and cut tracks, apply filters, whatever, that way if you mess up you still have the original side to re-do anything you messed up on.
i think that's about it so good luck and post a link here if you're into sharing because we're all saving media one cassette/record at a time.
or, just buy a usb device, there's one for records and one for cassettes but i've heard the results produced by both and i prefer my way and my way doesn't cost anything as long as you have everything needed but if you're starting with absolutely nothing then i do suggest the usb device way. good luck, have fun and share.!
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